Social preferences and Environmental Kuznets Curve in climate change integrated assessment modelling

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis implies that a bell shaped relationship between income and pollution would induce policy makers to pursue economic growth in order to improve environment. In this paper we will use the popular integrated assessment model DICE for climate change in order to consider a more generalised version of the social planner utility function and we will investigate the relationship between income and pollution for different values of the elasticity of the marginal utility of consumption (α). Results do not provide evidence in favour of the Environmental Kuznets Curve existence for CO<SUB align="right">2</SUB> emissions in the optimal path but EKC decomposition factors are affected by variations of the α parameter.